Author: Vidya

Are you feeling an urgency to make immediate changes to your product? Or trying to resist the urge to react to this current crisis? Are leaders in your organization bombarding you with ideas about how you should be responding? We’ve talked to dozens of product managers and product leaders over the past 2-3 weeks and we’ve heard many stories: teams undergoing complete pivots – scrapping all their current work and radically changing what they’re working on responding to immediate customer needs…to pulling up products with launch dates that were 6+ months ahead because they now seem to be much more relevant…to staying the course and adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

Now, more than ever, it seems critical to us that teams have to focus on core product principles to make decisions that aren’t just knee-jerk reactions, but based on real understanding. Before you stop reading because you can’t deal with yet one more thing to have to do…this core work can be done easily and quickly – and we believe can make all the difference. At least take 5 minutes to finish reading this before you completely change what your team works on.

Here’s a quick recap on the three steps that we describe as core foundations:

What problem are you solving? Don’t just throw around new feature or product ideas – identify and discuss the actual customer problem. Get your team on the same page what’s the customer experiencing and why. Write it down so everyone is on the same page.

Who is the customer? Is this a current customer, and if so, what’s changed in their attitudes, ability to pay, access in relation to your product. What do you know, vs what’s a hypothesis that can be tested. If this a potential new customer – how much do you understand them? Create a quick persona and build some empathy so that your solution ideas can be tested, before you start building something new.

Validate with scrappy research. We know it’s hard to get to execs right now if you’re b2b, most leaders are completely unreachable. But think about who you might use as a proxy, test your thinking with someone you know who has a similar position – even if it’s in your own company. If you’re b2c, there’s a lot of people staying-in-place who are easy to access for a quick 10-15 chat – especially if you can offer a small stipend. Even if you contact just 5 customers (or prospects) – at least you’re getting out of your own head and testing your ideas.

We feel so strongly about teams needing to go back to basics that we’re offering up our foundations course for free to all product teams. This online course is less than 3 hours, usually people take this over a week, but you can cram it all into a morning. If you pick just one area to check out – refresh on the problem statement. Making radically different decisions can be justified if you have these basics in place.

Even in this crisis, let’s stay true to solving real customer problems that we understand.

Product Rebels is a product management training and coaching firm run by long term product executives for companies like Intuit and Mitchell International. We have trained over 200 companies small and enterprise level in the skills and frameworks that help product management leaders and product managers deliver kick-ass customer experiences. We have a passion finding efficient ways of infusing customer insight into everything product teams do in pursuit of experiences that customers love …that drive growth. Join us in the Product Rebels Community on Facebookor the Product Rebels Community on LinkedIn.

Take a look at our very practical training courses and coaching programs that give you practical tools, frameworks, and support you can use tomorrow in becoming a more effective product leader. www.productrebels.com

As I write this, I’m thinking about leading two upcoming discussions on how to move into product management leadership. I’ve promoted dozens of people into senior management roles, and I’ve been thinking about what made them standout as potential managers, and what made them successful. The good news is that being a great product manager trains you already with so many of the skills to move into a management role – being the face of the team, working with many groups, influencing to get the job done etc. So, what does it take to standout from a bunch of standouts? I want to share some interesting patterns of behavior that we implicitly look for when we have those closed room discussions with HR about who’s going to get that precious manager role. I’m going to assume all the basics are already in place: right tenure, consistent high performer, track record of delivery. If you’ve got all that, then there are some intangible ingredients that I want to shed some light on:

Communicating like you’re already a manager. Often, being a great product manager means that you can communicate really clearly to your teams, and to your customers. This is table stakes. You have to be able to break down a vision into a clear roadmap, and then into workable chunks, and then into specific user stories. Product managers have this down – they know how to communicate what they want their teams to build. They’re also great at talking to customers – listening well, asking great questions, translating what they hear into needs. But being a people manager, and working with other senior leaders, entails taking all those skills and creating a different picture. Often PMs go into a ton of detail, they want to explain the work they’ve done, after all it was a ton of effort. But leaders don’t want to hear those – they want someone who can connect the business goals to the work being done in a way that makes sense. To be promotable, you have to be able to do this – it’s not a skill that execs are patient to see you grow into. If you can’t succinctly explain what you do and why it’s important for the business, you can’t get the right resources for your teams, and you can’t succeed. So spend less time explaining all the details, and more about telling a story, and connecting the dots.

Working the strategy Say/Do. This shows up as how you make decisions, and how much time you spend talking strategy and actually backing up what you do with the bigger picture in mind. Product managers are expected to understand the big picture – it should reflect in their roadmaps and customer documents. But how much do you actually follow this? Someone who has “leader” written all over them is the person who asks great questions about prioritization based on strategy. Who constantly starts backlog meetings (yes, backlog!) with the bigger picture in mind. It’s not just a question of knowing the company strategy & goals, it’s how you bring them to life in the way that you work every-day. Knowing that the person you’re about to promote already “gets it” goes a long way in setting them up for a manager role.

Feedback loops. People who are going to be good managers ask for feedback. A lot. They ask after meetings, they follow-up with senior leaders, they make a point of understanding how they show up. And then they take that feedback, try something new, and then ask for more feedback. You’d be surprised how little people do this. They wait passively for 1-1’s or monthly meetings – or even, worse, their annual performance reviews. When you can see someone is actively understanding how they show up, and are genuinely interested in improving themselves – you know that they will help others do the same – which is what you want in a people manager.

Do you still want to be a manager? Are you doing these things? We want to hear – write to us and share your stories of promotion, or trying to get promoted.

We see this picture of PM in the middle of UX, Tech and Business a lot:

From Mind The Product (https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/)

We use this graphic as well – it’s been a nice, introductory way to speak at a high-level about the product management function, and it highlights the importance of partnering with these three important peer functions. Product management works with business leaders/marketing teams, engineering teams and UX teams. They sit in the middle often translating from one to the other. But we’ve found this picture hasn’t been sufficient to talk about what the actual day-day job of a product manager should be. When you introduce a graphic that describes the function as this small overlap of a venn diagram – it discounts the sheer amount of work and knowledge that’s required to actually do the job.

So, we came up with a new graphic:

This may not be the best drawn diagram, but we want to introduce it as a better way to talk about how a product manager should approach their job. We think this is far more representative of the actual work that we all do on a year-round basis.

The outer circle goes to business. The product manager has to start with a broad and deep understanding and translating company vision, strategy and business objectives. These are the guardrails of our thinking – and we always need to go back to making sure that the decisions and tradeoffs we make are the right call for the business, industry and environment that we work in. We’ve seen lots of features go into products that customers ignore because they don’t make sense with what the business and the customer is trying to achieve.

The next inner circle is technology. This goes beyond partnering with the engineering or development team. The product manager doesn’t (often) code, but they (should) understand what the technology can/cannot do, understand the technical architecture and be able to ask the right questions, and have an engaged and knowledgeable discussion about alternatives. Without getting deep into the technology, the product manager is at the mercy of whatever technical recommendation is made. We’ve seen far too many product leaders and teams fail because they didn’t ask the right technical questions, because they weren’t prepared and didn’t dig deep enough. Technology is a core part of the job – better get used to getting into the details.

The core of the job is customer. Every part of the job is customer-driven. Whether that’s considering the product roadmap (what’s important to the customer), writing user stories (customer needs), doing customer research (talking to customers) – we could go on and on. Every single piece of work that’s produced is with the customer at heart. The product manager represents the customer at the table – they advocate for the customer, deeply understand their needs and ultimately make product decisions with the customer first, with the optimal technology and meeting business objectives.

When you look at product management this way – we believe you get a sense of how the pieces fit together and a better understanding of the expectations of the job. This isn’t a job for sissies!

Let us know what you think! We’d love to get your comments here, or send an email to vidya@productrebels.com and tell us how you see the PM job.

Now that it’s a few weeks past New Year, and we’re back heads-down hard at work – let’s sneak in a new year’s resolution that will make a real difference. Commit to talking to your customers at least once a month. That might not seem like a lot to those of you who are planning customer interviews weekly, building them into your sprints and calendars. However, for many of you, we know months can go by without reaching out. We’ve worked with a lot of company’s last year – some large and some in very early stages, and we’ve been shocked at how many don’t talk with customers regularly. It doesn’t matter how established the company, the attitude towards interacting with customers, getting their feedback and acting on what you learn is a habit that’s formed and established by the product leader. If the discipline isn’t introduced, then customer interaction doesn’t regularly happen and acting on customer feedback becomes an ad-hoc activity, usually something to consider when things go very wrong. The start of the new year is a great time to hit refresh and think about how you’d like to establish new important habits. For your product and team, there’s nothing that will make more of a difference than creating a new practice around regular customer interaction. Whether you’re testing a new idea, building a prototype, or launching a new feature – make sure that a customer test gets built in. Put it into your planning, write it into your calendar, make this a resolution that you can commit to.

Recently, we gave a talk at a big product conference. We talked about influence – how product managers need to exercise influence more than most. After all, we are usually individual contributors, accountable for a product -needing everyone to align and work together, but not directly managing anyone. This conference was in Eastern Europe so we were particularly interested in hearing the questions – was it the same situation for product managers across the seas, as we’d experienced in the US? Who were they most trying to influence? Our biggest surprise was where the majority of the questions centered – the frustration for product mangers to be “allowed” to talk with customers. The area where product managers most wanted to exercise influence was with their managers trying to getting access to customers!!

This wasn’t a one-off question, the majority of people who asked us questions during the talk, and then after at our booth – was all centered around this critical need. One that we take for granted – the ability and access to connect directly with customers. We wanted to share some of the tips & ideas that came out of these conversations because perhaps more people than we realize are in the same situation. Wanting to follow best practices in iterating and getting customer feedback, but finding themselves unable to do so. Here are a few of the ideas we discussed.

Use a proxy. When your customer is 5,000 miles away, watching what they do is not a readily available option. For one PM, they were building a system for a library and really wanted to understand behavior and interaction with their app. Our suggestion? Find a local library and talk to the people who were working and using library services. After accounting for cultural changes – what are the main questions? What were the surprises? How could you use your findings to show the importance of understanding local behavior.

Start with a Hypotheses: When you can’t get to customers, it’s really helpful to form a strong hypothesis – one that is very specific, measurable, has an outcome that can be tested. Rather than continuing to write user stories in a vacuum, figure out what you believe to be true – force yourself to confront the biggest unknowns you have, and then look for ways that you can quickly and cheaply test your assumptions.

Use remote tools: While we don’t like surveys very much – it’s better than nothing. Can you put together a more comprehensive survey that gets to people’s attitudes and beliefs? Recently, we conducted a large survey that was based on earlier market segmentation. In that, we looked for people who were lapsed members. Adding a question at the end to see if they were open to a quick conversation, is an easy and cheap way to find customers who will talk with you. Then use skype to connect with them – fast, cheap!

Get scrappy. When you can’t find your exact type of customer, in the same industry – getting any feedback is preferable to none. This is where you rely on friends & family to give you their perspective. Still go through the process of writing a learning plan & have your objectives…see what surprises come up. Don’t dismiss their feedback too fast if they don’t “get it” – this could be an indication that there’s an issue or gap in your thinking about your product.

Seek forgiveness not permission. This isn’t an option we readily recommend, and our least favorite…but in some cases, when you are just not given time to do customer research – you may have to resort to some stealth interactions. Go outside your regular working hours to talk to customers – slowly start feeding ideas from customers into your meetings. In particular, share insights that came directly from a customer interaction to show value. Sometimes you need the proof before you get the permission.

Tell us what you’ve done when you’ve struggled with getting customer feedback. We want to hear more tips & methods – what’s worked and what’s not? Leave us a comment now.

So, your product is out in the wild – and now you have a long list of product features just waiting to be built, and they’re all good ideas. Some of them even great! But that list is overwhelming and depressing – because it’s years and years of work – and your development partner is rolling his eyes. So you prioritize, and then you try and squeeze in that one extra feature, that one extra option that you just know will make a difference. Sound familiar? We all do it – we want the best product that’s possible – and we’re built to maximize our offerings.

So, when is enough? Everyone talks about elegant products – but when do you know it’s right? We want to give you three steps to put into practice today.

Figure out how you’ll test this feature without a single line of code – that means you need to figure out how to communicate your feature effectively.

Talk to your target consumer – and learn what they think of your brilliant idea. Good results? Start building as small as possible, release and test. Surprised by what you hear? Figure out what it means and go back to step 1.

Want an easy way to start? Pick a customer, any customer and send them an note – maybe it’s an email, maybe you know your clients well enough to address a real letter. Tell them they matter, you’re listening, and are ready to hear what’s on their mind. No strings, no offers, just a genuine way to say you care.

Product managers can make it really hard on themselves to connect with customers. If you really want, you can go through a ton of hoops, create meetings, send emails, read spreadsheets, schedule meetings a month out because it’s sooo hard to get together. All for the sake of learning more about customers.

Or, you could just talk to someone now. If you’re with a big consumer brand, go to where you sell your products and hang out. Wait until someone picks up your product and just talk to them. If you’re launching a new product, do the same thing for a competitive brand. If you with a b2b company, figure out how you talk to a user. Buy your favorite account manager a coffee, and get setup to talk to client.

If you’re going to be a product rebel and make a difference, you’re going to have to get scrappy about how you learn. Figure out the fastest, easiest way to connect with a real customer (or prospect) today. Don’t setup a meeting to think about it, do something today. It will make all the difference.

We just started working with a client on customer loyalty, and the metric we always use is Net Promoter Score. We know there’s lots of differing opinions on the effectiveness of NPS – but we haven’t yet found a super-simple alternative that allows you to take immediate action. So here’s why we always use NPS and why we think you need to take a stand and bring it in your company if you’re not using it – and if your company is using this – then make sure you’re doing something with what your customers are telling you!

NPS asks just one question – and it’s all about recommendation. Think about how interesting a question that is – we find ourselves recommending products we love without any hesitation. In fact, we can’t wait to tell someone if a product delights us. On the other hand, we are just as quick to tell everyone when we have a terrible experience. And then there’s a sea of mediocre in the middle where we struggle to remember the experience. So understanding the likelihood to recommend gives you a particular insight into how your customers are feeling about your product.

Implementing NPS means you just have to add one question – there are even API’s and company’s that will do it for you – but it’s SUPER simple. Getting the score, and understanding why can give you real insight and allow you to take customer-driven action that will increase loyalty. Figure out how to start using NPS today.

Sounds like a pretty easy question right? Should be able to rattle it off fast. Try it now – write it down. Then ask another product manager, or if you’re in a startup, ask a colleague – to do the same thing. Did they write down the same statement that you did? Chances are, you came up with different answers – maybe subtle differences, maybe major ones. We gave a workshop last year to 35 founders. One of these company’s had two co-founders. They wrote completely different problem statements. They had spent the last year assuming they were working towards the same goals. You’ll be amazed at how many product teams and company’s go about never actually stating the exact problem they are working on.

Your problem statement should cover who has the problem and why it’s happening. In one (or two) short sentences. You get bonus points if you explain what the customer is experiencing because of the problem. And the aim of your product (or feature) is to overcome that problem. Simple, right?

If you’re struggling writing your problem statement, and want more guidance, this is one of the first areas we teach in our Customer Foundations course. Step-by-step instructions to get you facing the right direction. Head over and take a look.